


We Happy Few

by manyafukudere (Manya_Kami)



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble Collection, Flashbacks, Gangs, M/M, Overall Disgusting Environment, Police, Poverty, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6697000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manya_Kami/pseuds/manyafukudere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a humble home on the wrong side of town, lives a less-than-perfect couple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rain

He's the reclusive one. He doesn't much go outside, leaving the safe confines of his modest dungeon. It's some form of paranoia that plagues his being - fear of the Yakuza, fear of gangs, fear of crusty old men that rather seem to enjoy feeling him up in dark, isolated alleys. Not to mention the PTSD that racks his body and courses through his veins. No he'd rather stay inside, thank you very much.

...

When he does venture out, it's almost always raining.

Not storming, or even actual legitimate rain, really. It's one of those sticky, humid drizzles that glaze over everything, covering the earth in a sheen of harsh, blindingly dull grey. The clouds that hang low have no seams, so there is no sky. Rivers run through the streets. Oceans form in the little uneven dips of the concrete. He's sure the sewers are flooded by now.

He scrunches up his nose and narrows his corpse eyes and daringly opens the door of their apartment wide - letting in a spray of nasty sky fluid. He wraps his scarf tighter around his being. The rain isn't cold, but it isn't warm either. It's not in the middle though. It nearly doesn't exist.

As he trudges down the rickety stairs of the beat-up little building far too shabby to call an apartment complex, his gun powder hair becomes heavy with rain until it becomes a long slick of ink, trailing behind him and slowly coming out of its plait. He grumbles something about having to redo it later, and tugs his scarf tighter.

His boots are low on his ankles and worn, so much so that thick muddy water bleeds through the felt on the outside and the leather on the inside until it's soaking his socks drenched. His feet are cold and gross and probably wrinkled by now. Ugh.

It's like walking through limbo. This is the street that he knows, and he recognizes that alley over there, and that run-down café up there looks vaguely familiar, but it's so dead around here, like a ghost town. He feels like a damned spirit, wandering on a boundless path straight towards Hell. He wouldn't usually go out in this - if he must go out, at least hope the weather's favorable - but he has reason to, today.

After all, he'd never forgive himself if he didn't make sure his beloved came home safely.

...

The younger of the pair is found not so much later at a local dive, awash in the rancid stench of booze and flushed with influence. A sigh, and he's heaving the drunkard home across his back, peeking glances at that tried face and sloppy marine hair. His eyes harden when they come across the right eye - that one that wasn't branded with fire all those years ago - and notices it's rimmed thickly with purple and putrid yellow.

Someone had hit his beloved. And given him a black eye, to boot.

Another sigh and several exaggerated trudges later and they're at their humble home, and the older lays the younger down across the modest futon on the floor before facing himself in a clouded mirror.

His makeup is smeared. His hair is a mess. His skin is too pale and his face too young - but now's not the time of identifying flaws in oneself. He grabs a fistful of tissue paper and wets it with hard water from the tap, then walks back over to where his lover lies.

"Mmm, Hakuryuu..." His voice is sing-song and rather fond. "Be careful, or someday that pretty face won't be the only thing that gets mussed up..." He gently dabbed the mud and sticky booze away from his beloved's face with the cold faucet water, humming some ridiculous tune to himself all the while.

 


	2. Shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stupid flashbacks. This doesn't make any sense.

_"Is this supposed to be a home? Hakuryuu, if this is all you can afford... I don't have any problem with going back to work."_

_It certainly wasn't ideal, for a home. The walls were cracked. There was one room, and a tiny, miserable bathroom attached with a sink that ran rusty, hard water. The floor was all filthy, cracked tile with dirt and everything else wedged between each beige plate. The walls were damp and smelly. Anyone who dared look above could easily see stains on the ceiling; dark splotches of God-knows-what peppering the dirty white. There was a lamp, only one, in the corner, with a flickering, dying light casting ghostly shadows about the place. The 'kitchen', if one could even call it that, consisted of a small counter and filthy sink, and a pathetically small fridge with a weak lightbulb and miniscule icebox._

_The room was on the third second out of three floors of the run-down apartment and was dirt cheap, enough so that a poor, corrupted, underpaid police officer like Hakuryuu could afford it. The neighbors were few and far between, but also beyond shady. The building reeked of marijuana and the landlord was a right drunk. The little office downstairs held the underlying stench of piss and bad coffee, not to mention Hakuryuu's apartment room itself and the horrid smells it carried - (the entire room smelled like sex, and the telltale stains on the tiled floor finished the rest of the story) - simply added to the building's already terrible atmosphere._

_The stairways were all outside, only outside, and were mighty rickety. The windows to the apartment rooms were also, stained, and duty as well. The door had no lock, and the handle waggled freely. Hakuryuu sighed._

_"No, you're not going back to work. We'll make do."_

_"Hakuryuu, I_ _won't_ _live here. I don't have any problem with going back to Sin -"_

_"I do."_

_Hakuryuu inwardly cringed at the name. Sinbad ran a prosperous prostitution business, one that Judal had worked for since he was at the tender age of fifteen. It paid rather well, Hakuryuu could only imagine what kind of house they'd be able to buy should Judal continue to work for him. But Sinbad was a crime lord and a crook - there was no way Hakuryuu would let Judal go back there. No, not ever. Not after he'd so chivalrously save the ravenette from the Yakuza boss all that time ago._

_"We're starting anew. We'll make this house our own, just the two of us. I promise."_

_Hakuryuu grabbed his beloved's hand and kissed it gently, but Judal only huffed. He stomped into the room and inhaled deeply, then promptly went to coughing up a storm. Hakuryuu couldn't help but laugh. He shut the door behind him and the rancid rain from outside ceased to drown the tile nearest the door with cold rainwater. Hakuryuu stood beside his lover and took a look around the joint yet again - this was going to be no easy task - and began unloading his bag, smile prominent on his face._

_"Looks like I've got my work cut out for me."_

_Judal only snorted._

_"Yeah, you sure do."_

...

"Well, we've lived here for officially one year now." Hakuryuu voice is light and uncharacteristically perky as he runs his fingers through his lover's glossy locks, pulling shadows out from the inky plait and spreading them across the room.

"Hmm. So we have." Judal leans into Hakuryuu's touch, wincing a bit as the younger works through a particularly painful tat.

"Should we celebrate?"

There really isn't all too much to celebrate. The apartment hasn't improved much, not as much as Hakuryuu had first hoped he'd be able to do when they first moved in. There was the addition of some equally cheap and trashy furniture, the new rough-than-you-would-think carpet at their feet, and a fresh coat of paint on three of the four walls, and that was about it. Still, if 'celebrating' their first year in this dungeon of a place is an excuse to break out the _expensive_ liquor Hakuryuu had snagged from one of his co-workers, Hakuryuu's glad to start such a tradition.

Judal leans back against Hakuryuu's chest when the bluenette is finished with his hair and hums as a smirk creeps across his ashen cheeks. "I s'ppose."

Hakuryuu smiles and pushed Judal off of him, much to the older's distaste, then promptly walks over to their minifridge and begins to sift through the growing arsenal of booze they possess.

"Sinbad's house was still _nicer_ , you know."

Hakuryuu can't help but chuckle. "Yes, I suppose it was."


End file.
